Biomedical subjects

Magne Thoresen

Publications and source records attributed to Magne Thoresen.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Own and parental war experience as a risk factor for mental health problems among adolescents with an immigrant background: results from a cross sectional study in Oslo, Norway.

BACKGROUND: An increasing proportion of immigrants to Western countries in the past decade are from war affected countries. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of war experience among adolescents and their parents and to investigate possible differences in internalizing and externalizing mental health problems between adolescents exposed and unexposed to own and parental war experience. METHOD: The study is based on a cross-sectional population-based survey of all 10th grade pupils in Oslo for two consecutive years. A total of 1,758 adolescents were included, all with both parents born outside of Norway. Internalizing and externalizing mental health problems were measured by Hopkins Symptom Checklist-10 and subscales of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, respectively. Own and parental war experience is based on adolescent self-report. RESULTS: The proportion of adolescents with own war experience was 14% with the highest prevalence in immigrants from Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. The proportion of parental war experience was 33% with Sub-Saharan Africa being highest. Adolescents reporting own war experience had higher scores for both internalizing and externalizing mental health problems compared to immigrants without war experience, but only externalizing problems reached statistically significant differences. For parental war experience there was a statistically significant relationship between parental war experience and internalizing mental health problems. The association remained significant after adjustment for parental educational level and adolescents' own war experience. CONCLUSION: War exposure is highly prevalent among immigrants living in Oslo, Norway, both among adolescents themselves and their parents. Among immigrants to Norway, parental war experience appears to be stronger associated with mental health problems than adolescents own exposure to war experience.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2006

Regression analysis with categorized regression calibrated exposure: some interesting findings.

BACKGROUND: Regression calibration as a method for handling measurement error is becoming increasingly well-known and used in epidemiologic research. However, the standard version of the method is not appropriate for exposure analyzed on a categorical (e.g. quintile) scale, an approach commonly used in epidemiologic studies. A tempting solution could then be to use the predicted continuous exposure obtained through the regression calibration method and treat it as an approximation to the true exposure, that is, include the categorized calibrated exposure in the main regression analysis. METHODS: We use semi-analytical calculations and simulations to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach compared to the naive approach of not correcting for measurement error, in situations where analyses are performed on quintile scale and when incorporating the original scale into the categorical variables, respectively. We also present analyses of real data, containing measures of folate intake and depression, from the Norwegian Women and Cancer study (NOWAC). RESULTS: In cases where extra information is available through replicated measurements and not validation data, regression calibration does not maintain important qualities of the true exposure distribution, thus estimates of variance and percentiles can be severely biased. We show that the outlined approach maintains much, in some cases all, of the misclassification found in the observed exposure. For that reason, regression analysis with the corrected variable included on a categorical scale is still biased. In some cases the corrected estimates are analytically equal to those obtained by the naive approach. Regression calibration is however vastly superior to the naive method when applying the medians of each category in the analysis. CONCLUSION: Regression calibration in its most well-known form is not appropriate for measurement error correction when the exposure is analyzed on a percentile scale. Relating back to the original scale of the exposure solves the problem. The conclusion regards all regression models.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2006

The relationship between age of menarche and mental distress in Norwegian adolescent girls and girls from different immigrant groups in Norway: results from an urban city cross-sectional survey.

Lower age of menarche has been associated with increased mental distress among adolescent girls. The association might be mediated via body image, as girls with early menarche tend to have higher weight than those with late onset menarche. Many of the existing studies of menarche and mental distress are based on samples of white, western girls. The aim of the study was to analyze the association between age of menarche and mental distress among Norwegian girls and girls from different immigrant groups, and to study the effect of body mass index (BMI) and the difference between current and desired weight, on the relationship between age of menarche and mental distress. The study was a cross-sectional population-based self-report survey of all 10th grade pupils in Oslo for two consecutive years. A total of 3694 girls (91%) participated, one quarter of which were first or second generation immigrants. The Hopkins Symptom Checklist-10 was used to measure mental distress. An inverse, linear association between age of menarche and mental distress was found for both Norwegian girls and girls from all the immigrant groups. Regardless of immigrant status, girls with early onset menarche had higher BMI and higher difference in current and desired weight than those with late onset menarche. In linear regression, the difference in current and desired weight was more strongly associated with mental distress both among the Norwegian girls and girls from immigrant groups than age of menarche and BMI when controlling for social and behavioral factors. Early age of menarche might serve as a predictor for psychopathology in Norwegians girls as well as in girls from different immigrant groups. The association between age of menarche and mental distress might be mediated via differences in current and desired weight.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Positive affect as a factor of resilience in the pain-negative affect relationship in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to examine positive affect (PA) as a factor of resilience in the relationships between pain and negative affect (NA) in a sample of patients with rheumatoid arthritis. METHODS: Forty-three patients (30 women; mean age, 57 years) were interviewed weekly by telephone for 8 weeks. Multilevel modeling was applied to study the within-week relationships among the variables. RESULTS: There was a Pain x PA interaction effect on NA (beta=-0.05, P<.01) indicating a weaker relationship between pain and NA in weeks with more PA. Pain (beta=0.37, P<.002), interpersonal stress (beta=2.42, P<.001), depression (beta=0.26, P<.01), average perceived stress (beta=10.80, P<.001), and also weekly PA (beta=-0.1, P<.01) had a main effect upon NA. CONCLUSION: Positive affect is most influential in reducing NA during weeks of higher pain and may be a factor of resilience, helping patients experiencing pain fluctuations as less distressful than at lower levels of PA.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Consumption of soft drinks and hyperactivity, mental distress, and conduct problems among adolescents in Oslo, Norway.

OBJECTIVES: We examined whether high levels of consumption of sugar-containing soft drinks were associated with mental distress, hyperactivity, and conduct problems among adolescents. METHODS: A cross-sectional population-based survey was conducted with 10th-grade students in Oslo, Norway (n = 5498). We used the Hopkins Symptom Checklist and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire to assess mental health outcomes. RESULTS: There was a J-shaped dose-response relationship between soft drink consumption and mental distress, conduct problems, and total mental health difficulties score; that is, adolescents who did not consume soft drinks had higher scores (indicating worse symptoms) than those who consumed soft drinks at moderate levels but lower scores than those with high consumption levels. The relationship was linear for hyperactivity. In a logistic regression model, the association between soft drink consumption and mental health problems remained significant after adjustment for behavioral, social, and food-related variables. The highest adjusted odds ratios were observed for conduct problems among boys and girls who consumed 4 or more glasses of sugar-containing soft drinks per day. CONCLUSIONS: High consumption levels of sugar-containing soft drinks were associated with mental health problems among adolescents even after adjustment for possible confounders.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

[How are patients with acute coronary syndromes treated in Norwegian hospitals?].

BACKGROUND: Despite recent advances in the understanding and treatment of the acute coronary syndromes, the extent to which this progress is applied in clinical practice in Norway is uncertain. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We performed a nation-wide retrospective survey in 17 Norwegian hospitals to delineate the characteristics and treatment of these patients. During the last quarter of 2000, data on 913 consecutive patients who were discharged with a diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome were analysed. RESULTS: The women (37%) were on average older (median 77 years) than the men (median 69 years), they more often had hypertension and diabetes mellitus. Men were more frequently treated with statins and had a history of smoking. A similar proportion of each gender had acute myocardial infarction (68%). Coronary angiography was performed in 338 (37%). Medical treatment was similar for both genders, but women were less frequently offered angiography (27%) than men (43%), p < 0.001). In multivariate analysis the gender difference was significant for the youngest patients. Patients treated at community hospitals where less likely to undergo angiography (26%) than patients treated at regional hospitals (57%), p < 0.001. INTERPRETATION: This survey reveals significant differences in the management of acute coronary syndrome patients even in a public health care system. Women and patients treated at community hospitals were to a lesser degree offered coronary angiography.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Post-radiotherapy plasma total glutathione is associated to outcome in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

We have studied the role of systemic oxidative stress for survival of patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC). Patients with lowest plasma total GSH levels had the lowest 36 months survival. In patients with post-radiotherapy concentrations of plasma total GSH less than median value, about 73% died during the 36 months follow-up compared to about 21% of patients with GSH values above median. Systemic oxidative stress as assessed by low GSH in post-radiotherapy plasma is associated to outcome in HNSCC patients.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Bodily pain and associated mental distress among immigrant adolescents. A population-based cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to describe differences among immigrant groups in bodily pain, and analyze its association with mental distress. METHOD: A population-based cross-sectional study was carried out involving tenth grade pupils in Oslo. Of the 7,343 pupils that participated, one-quarter were first- or second-generation immigrants. The Hopkins Symptom Checklist-10 was used to measure mental distress. All information on pain and mental distress was self-reported. RESULTS: Girls reported more bodily pain from all types of pain. Headache was the most prevalent pain site across gender and immigrant groups. Strong associations between mental distress and number of pain sites were found for all immigrant groups. Neck and shoulder pain yielded the highest odds ratio (OR) for mental distress among the majority of the immigrant groups. The Sub-Saharan African group had the highest adjusted OR for mental distress [OR=9.8 (1.1-82.7)] when reporting three or more pain sites, and the Indian Subcontinent the lowest [OR=4.0 (1.8-8.8)]. CONCLUSION: The differences in number and types of pain were small, though significant between the different immigrant groups. Adolescents from Sub-Saharan Africa seem to react with more mental distress to bodily pain than adolescents emigrating from the Indian Subcontinent.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

The effect of an ergonomic intervention on musculoskeletal, psychosocial and visual strain of VDT data entry work: the Norwegian part of the international study.

The Norwegian MEPS (musculoskeletal--visual--psychosocial--stress) study included 3 groups: data entry, data dialogue (female) and data dialogue (male). Before intervention, the data entry group reported significantly more symptoms and signs of musculoskeletal illness and had longer periods in front of the video display terminal (VDT) without a break. The ergonomic intervention consisted mainly of ergonomic information and training. After intervention, the data dialogue female group reported a significant reduction in shoulder pain in parallel with a reduction in trapezius load. Increasing the understanding in how to adjust the work stand and chair may have been contributing factors to reducing the pain level. There was a significant reduction in eye problems in all groups; the greatest reduction in eye symptoms was seen in the groups who had new optometric corrections.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

The effect of an ergonomic intervention on musculoskeletal, psychosocial and visual strain of VDT entry work: organization and methodology of the international study.

This special issue of the International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics (JOSE) reports the results from an extensive multinational and multidisciplinary collaborative investigation of the impacts on visual display terminal (VDT) work of musculoskeletal, visual, ergonomic, and psychosocial factors. For brevity, this effort has been referred to as the MEPS project (musculoskeletal--eyestrain--psychosocial--stress). This paper lays out the basic methodological structure of the study. The study was conducted in 4 countries utilizing VDT data entry workers as the primary subject population. A battery of objective and subject assessment measures, including muscle load, visual function, physical and visual strain, postural, ergonomic and psychosocial factors, were assessed at 3 different points in time. A pre-test was given prior to an ergonomic intervention. Two post-tests were given 1 month and 1 year after the ergonomic intervention.

Computer Terminals↗

PubMed2005

A cross-country comparison of short- and long-term effects of an ergonomic intervention on musculoskeletal discomfort, eyestrain and psychosocial stress in VDT operators: selected aspects of the international project.

Three groups of data entry female visual display terminal (VDT) workers from Norway (n = 30), Poland (n = 33) and the USA (n = 29) were compared. Before intervention, the Norwegian group reported more neck pain compared with the Polish group. The Polish group reported less shoulder pain than both the U.S. and the Norwegian groups. The clinical examination documented fewer symptoms and signs of musculoskeletal illness among the Polish participants compared with the Norwegian and the U.S. groups. After intervention, the Norwegian group reported a reduction in neck pain while the U.S. group reported a reduction in shoulder pain. The Polish group reported an increase in neck, shoulder and forearm pain at follow-up compared to after intervention. The Polish group recorded higher flexion of the upper arm at follow-up parallel with an increase of pain in the upper part of the body. Visual discomfort showed variable results in the 3 countries.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Will visual discomfort among visual display unit (VDU) users change in development when moving from single vision lenses to specially designed VDU progressive lenses?

PURPOSE: Three types of progressive additions lenses (PAL) specially designed for VDU-work and one single vision lens were compared in a prospective field study. The aim was to investigate if these progressive lenses created a difference in the development of visual discomfort compared to single vision lenses when working on an optimized VDU-workstation. METHODS: The study had a prospective, parallel group design, with four groups of VDU-workers. Approximately 40 subjects in each group, selected after careful task analysis with special attention towards the visual angles and distances to the work tasks. The groups were followed over one year. A questionnaire concerning visual conditions, working conditions, discomfort in different body areas, the status of the subjects' optometric corrections, psychological factors both at work and at home, amount, frequency and duration of VDU-work etc. was filled in before the intervention, after six months and after one year. No other contact was made with the subjects. The VDU-lenses included were Interview (Essilor), Gradal RD (Zeiss) and Technica (American Optical). Pain intensity and duration were assessed on a 100 mm Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) before the intervention, and six and twelve months after the intervention. All subjects were given a complete optometric examination. RESULTS: Only small changes in the development of headache and visual discomfort were registered. However, the subjective evaluation of area of clear vision and overall satisfaction was significantly improved for the Interview and Gradal RD lens (p < 0.05). There were no significant changes for Technica and single vision lenses. CONCLUSION: Lens designs that cover viewing distances from near and out to approximately 2 meters work well compared to lens designs trying to cover greater range of clear vision. When tasks analysis shows that single vision correction may be used, this is still an acceptable solution.

Computer Terminals↗

PubMed2003

Berry intake increases the activity of the gamma-glutamylcysteine synthetase promoter in transgenic reporter mice.

A diet rich in fruit and vegetables is associated with decreased risk of disease. One possible mechanism for this is that dietary antioxidants positively regulate protective genes. Toward our goal to identify bioactive compounds with such functions in plants, we developed transgenic mice that express luciferase controlled by the gamma-glutamylcysteine synthetase heavy subunit (GCS(h)) promoter. Mice that consumed a nonpurified diet ad libitum were supplemented with juices or extracts of antioxidant-rich berries for 42 h or 3-4 wk. The treatments generally increased luciferase activity in brain and skeletal muscle and decreased it in liver compared with controls fed water. The same overall pattern was also found in mice fed ellagic acid (EA), a phenolic acid found in many berries. This change in GCS(h) promoter activity after berry treatment occurred in only approximately 50% of the mice, indicating that they were either responders or nonresponders. Our results demonstrate for the first time that berry extracts rich in polyphenols and EA can induce GCS(h) in vivo. The induction of protective enzymes may be important for the chemopreventive effects of fruits and vegetables.

Animals↗

PubMed2002

Do specially designed visual display unit lenses create increased postural load compared with single-vision lenses during visual display unit work?

Three different types of spectacle lenses, specially designed for visual display unit (VDU) work, were compared with single-vision lenses regarding postural load. The different corrections effect on postural load was measured by using electromyography. Muscle loads were recorded from the trapezius muscle and the infraspinatus muscle. Continuous measurements of body posture were measured by using three dual axis inclinometers attached to the head, back, and upper arm. No significant differences were found between the single-vision lenses and the specially designed VDU lenses regarding muscle load. Small differences were found regarding the head angle. The study concludes that these new lens designs create interesting opportunities for the optometrist to optimize the visual conditions for VDU workers.

Arm↗